Rousseau's Solitude

Walking to get away; walking to escape. Before taking this class I never saw walking as anything but the means to an end. I used to drive a lot in high school and this provided me with what all these writers and philosophers find through walking. While driving, I was distanced from everyone else; I was safe in my Volkswagen Beetle. I could blast whatever newest and most degrading pop song I wanted with not even the faintest thought of being judged. I could sing as loud as I wanted, as off key as I wanted. I could even dance however I wanted. 

One time while I was driving, thinking both sides of the street had a red light, I began rapping gin and juice, which (I am confidant to say) I know every word to. Not only was I rapping-painfully-but I was dancing. Not just any dance either. I was doing a disco arm sweep, but instead of one finger, I chose a thumbs up. 

Regardless I was out of reality and, finally, free from everything. Free from “the memory of company.” Even when I looked over to find that the other side of the street did not have a red light, and was in traffic; even when the guys in the car next to me were pointing, laughing and filming me, I still felt safe; separated. At that moment, nothing affected me besides myself. I was able to live “detached” from the world. 

Rousseau speaks of this detachment, but acknowledges that it took time; that originally “the memory of the company (he) kept followed (him) into solitude.” 

When walking, I’m never able to fully escape the agenda of day to day life. “My goal, everyday is to get out of myself, but something always brings me back in.” When reading this I thought of agendas: assignments, deadlines, expenses. And not the fun, gooey side to any of those things either. Not the actual interesting material of the assignments, but rather the pressure to read, process, produce; the formulas of life. 

This agenda, so deeply engraved, surfacing itself whenever it likes, conquering my consciousness and any bliss. I become a prisoner to the responsibilities and markups of day to day life. 

Once I acknowledge that I’m thinking, or stressing rather, about these things it starts a routine spiral. A spiral that brings with it stress, not about the actual assignments or deadlines, but rather stress stemming from the fact that I’m stressing. That would be fine if it was just stress. That’s easy, I can just, rationally, shake it off as stress and put it away. But when this occurs with happiness, or fulfillment, the spiral buries deep.

“As these feelings continue we worry and make ourselves unhappy. As for me, it matters little that I know I will suffer tomorrow; to be at peace, it is sufficient that I not suffer today. I am not affected by the evil I foresee, but only by the one I feel and that limits it considerably.” 

To live in the moment! To shake off the future, and focus on the present. To savor unhappiness and un-fulfillment. To appreciate it for what it is. No one really does that. No one is whole heartedly merely an observer to the world around them. They constantly have agendas on their minds. Or, maybe they’ve fooled themselves and choose distractions: romance, work, whatever, they’re still inside themselves. 

In one of my classes we read Madame Bovary and in this book the only characters who prove truly superior in the end are L’hereux and Homais, one of which distracts himself with the pursuit of money, and the other distracting himself with medicine. It’s not coincidental that the two people in this novel who are not somehow crushed at the end, have chosen distractions that don’t directly rely directly on the opinions of people. Choosing distractions that stay constant, such as flowers, dress, food seems like the safest bet; living devoid others approval. Building your identity for you and only you-a recipe to escape unhappiness. 

Maybe looking back brings a sense of romance in unhappiness. But that becomes sentimentality. Rosseau is full of it. There’s no way he could truly have been unaffected by ‘the evil (he) foresees.’ In theory this is great, but the actual practice of it is hard. 

When I was a kid I don’t remember every thinking if I was happy. I don’t remember even thinking if a day was good or bad. I just lived. Every moment was its own TV episode. If I was sad, there was always a direct reason. Something to point to; something to blame it on. And I’d feel the sadness, but then move on from it. It never lingered; never made its way into my psyche. 

Now it seems that, “half the day is passed in anguish before I have reached the refuge I am seeking.” With more education, more rational, reason, came a higher level of awareness. An awareness that my surroundings affect me, but that I can also affect my surroundings. And with that, came the pressure to affect and manipulate everything to the best of my abilities. To manipulate a world in which I could be happiest in. But even on days when I feel like I’ve done everything in my power to set myself up well-taken care of all responsibilities, resolved anything that was bothering me, anything that was still on my conscience-and I achieve this ‘refuge’ I don’t know what to do with it. It becomes empty space; space that’s content, but space nonetheless. And space needs to be filled. 

Programmed to look for productivity, this refuge scares me. And although comforting and freeing for a moment, that moment passes, my brain looking for anything within itself to occupy itself, for it knows it can rely on itself. Observing its surroundings, sure it could do that, but that’s reliant on me, and my conscious decision to avert my focus to my surroundings, simply observing a flower, “laugh at the incredible torments my persecutors constantly give themselves in vain, while I remain at peace, busied with flowers, stamens, and childish things and do not even think of them.” Filling empty space; the empty space in which happiness (at its core) resides in. 

I walked home from school for this walk. I live in the sixteenth, so I walk through basically every possible tourist attraction. But I like this, there’s something nice in seeing places where people are experiencing something, but, not really being a full tourist, not feeling the pressure to experience anything. 

As I walk, I stop, suddenly. It’s not even really my own decision, but rather something deeper, warning me to stop or I might miss something. I look over Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the ferris wheel, the Egyptian obelisk. I see it all. The sun setting behind it, calming off the frantic tourist-ensued chaos and letting the city just be. The sun carries with it this calm; a calm I suddenly feel a pressure to intake. Breathing in deeply, I hope that some of this calm will lodge itself deeply within myself and stay. I want to trap it. It’s beautiful, too beautiful for me to fully appreciate, fully comprehend; too massive for me at this moment.

Walking is never an escape for me. It’s not somewhere I can merely be with myself. It’s time to be reminded of the pressures around me. Maybe it’s that I’m usually walking in a city, maybe walking in nature would be different. But so far, walking doesn’t bring me this same detachment as it does for Rosseau. 

Being alone does. Even being on the metro provides me with some perverse pleasure, knowing that I’m separated from everyone around me. That I’m alone, free to judge or observe outfits, hairstyles, reading material.

Walking does, I guess, bring back memories sometimes. Smelling a familiar perfume or seeing a familiar wind. And this provides a momentary, “tender, touching, delightful sentiment.” A sentiment that I cherish. It’s these sentiments, as disorienting as they may be, that together build up who I’ve become; who I am. And there’s comfort in them. But more than that, there’s a comfort in knowing that I am the only one who can experience that memory and the sentiment that comes with it.

Walking as a means of solitude; using walking to remind yourself of your independence is therefore, easy. Rousseau found that, “All I am capable of in such a case is very quickly forgetting and fleeing. The disturbance in my heart disappears with the object which has caused it, and I return to calm as soon as I am alone.” Being alone is comforting. You can trust yourself, and to an extent you know what to expect from yourself. 

Rousseau states, “My ardent natural temperament irritates me; my indolent natural temperament pacifies me.” 

This goes back to Cain and Abel. Cain was the “sedentary soul.” He was “the man who works and tames nature to materially construct a new universe.” Abel was the “nomadic soul.” The “man who plays and constructs an ephemeral system of relations between nature and life.” Everyone has a Cain and an Abel. A side to himself which is ‘indolent’ and one which is ‘ardent.’ Maybe the city brings out the later. 

Regardless, Rosseau clearly found a comfortable solitude in walking, eventually collapsing and later dying on a walk. Whether he took such pride (slightly egotistical at that) in this enjoyment of solitude because he truly was that independent, or rather because he was too afraid to face humanity; too afraid to put any reliance on something so unreliable, we’ll never know.